My main complaint, watching it, is that the video is made from inside the crowd. So the happy fan yells are 3-4 times as loud as the people on the panel talking. They come off as more appreciative than intimidated, but these are the voice actors who decided to come and they're actors. The panel moderator so far (I'm about halfway through) deflected the only unreasonable request that came through ("do this voice!" "Lets leave that up to them at the end of the panel!").

There's a summary thread over here of the whole con, there's some other comments about the panel as well. (Those guys are very anti-creepy, so if anything I think it's a safe site to link and a trustworthy source.)

TaintedDeity wrote:Tainted Deity

suffer-cait wrote:One day I'm gun a go visit weeks and discover they're just a computer in a trashcan at an ice cream shop.

Weeks wrote:There's a summary thread over here of the whole con, there's some other comments about the panel as well. (Those guys are very anti-creepy, so if anything I think it's a safe site to link and a trustworthy source.)

Thank you for this.

The Reaper wrote:Evolution is a really really really long run-on sentence.

Game_boy wrote:There are probably some good moments but it's just so painful seeing them in a room full of fans, they're probably intimidated. I can't watch it.

It's not nearly as bad as you think it might be.

How bad are the fan questions?

All fan questions were screened by the people running it and they were pretty standard affair. There are various different cameras recording it, the one I watched was alright but not great (just a recording of the live stream). There's an HD one with great picture quality but the camera is right in the crowd and like Vaniver said, whenever the crowd made any noise it drowned out the VA's voices.

With regards to the latest episode:

Everytime there's a Sweetie Belle episode she becomes my favourite CMC, but then there's an Applebloom episode and my allegience changes so easily.

Spoiler:

Not much to say about the plot of the episode itself although I could relate. Enjoyed the massive info dump about the ponyville and the world. Loved the way the timber wolves were animinated.

Right, this is a bit off-topic right now, but I really must respond to it because Twi is my favorite pony.

Spoiler:

The Scyphozoa wrote:I consider myself a nerd but none of my friends or I are anything like her. She's a bookworm, not a nerd in the new, cooler sense of the word.*

If she's the nerd of the group, then it's kind of for the same reasons people dislike The Big Bang Theory.

It's hard to describe. It's like she's the one the writers tried to connect to realistic human personalities, but that just doesn't feel like it fits in that world. The other five are playful exaggerations but with a necessary ground to reality that keeps them from being too extreme. Twilight is like a normal person but with, well, almost some parody laid on top.

The reason I say little kids would like her is that she's the first pony introduced,,and I think small minds have a tendency to "default" like that.

*20% cooler

I like Twilight Sparkle because I'm a grad student in the sciences and I am basically her. I try upmost to be rational and reasonable about everything but I am absolutely, positively, completely terrified of disappointing my advisor (see: Lesson Zero). I too was told to stop hitting the books so hard and start making friends. There are many other instances where Twilight will do something and I will sit there and go, "Oh God, that's me."

If you're upset that she seems like a normal person and that what I'm saying is just emphasizing your point, I'm not sure why you don't get the same vibe from Applejack. To me, Applejack seems like the most normal, multifaceted, down-to-earth pony of the Mane Six. I personally love the more normal personalities. I find it...smarter, for lack of a better term. More intriguing and endearing and what I love about the show and what separates it from normal kids' shows. The characters are not just character tropes of Happy-Go-Lucky/Prissy/Sweet-and-Shy-But-Don't-Piss-Her-Off. They have depth to them and aspirations and concerns you can relate to even as an adult.

I thought people disliked the Big Bang Theory because the near-constant laugh track is super annoying.

Overall, though, it seems like you don't like the kind of nerd I am as a character. That's okay, but it hurts a bit because it does seem like you really feel your type of nerdiness is superior and that you are looking down on me. But I could be taking this all way too personally.

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life." -Terry Pratchett

Yes, I think you are. And I sure hope you're not actually as manic as Twilight is.

There's also the fact that every time she opens her mouth she sounds like she's either reading or dictating, even when she's not. Kind of grinds my eardrums after a while.

And I do get the same vibe from Applejack a little bit, but there are reasons that I make an exception. The accent/dialect is endearing. Her element is actually a real thing, magic is not. And most importantly without her there would be no Apple Bloom.

She's my favorite CMC. I really like CMC episodes, but I wish they'd lose the habit of putting two of them in a row.

3rdtry wrote:If there ever is another World War, I hope they at least have the decency to call it "World War 2: Episode One"

The Scyphozoa wrote:Her element is actually a real thing, magic is not.

But Friendship is, and Friendship is Magic.

But if Magic isn't real, and Friendship is Magic, then does that mean that Friendship isn't real either?

And I guess Twilight's may favorite character, too. Based on this and the fact that I also liked Rose Lalonde in Homestuck, it seems as though I have a thing for characters who are 'intellectual' or 'well-read' in some sense of the word, characters who display a higher degree of common sense when compared to other members of the cast (and thus end up in a kind of 'straight man' role) and the colour Purple.

So...um...yeah...

Edit - I also noticed that a large number of people here have the Purple Unicorn as their favorite character (or one of them).

Does this make us all Twilight Fans?

I really should be working right now, but somehow I don't have the energy.

The Mighty Thesaurus wrote:My moral system allows me to bitch slap you for typing that.

I'm going to go ahead and say that Friendship is Witchcraft is more entertaining than Friendship is Magic. I kind of hope they eventually do one for every episode, but then not all of them would be very good.

3rdtry wrote:If there ever is another World War, I hope they at least have the decency to call it "World War 2: Episode One"

The Scyphozoa wrote:I'm going to go ahead and say that Friendship is Witchcraft is more entertaining than Friendship is Magic. I kind of hope they eventually do one for every episode, but then not all of them would be very good.

I am leaning this way too a bit.

It is very different though. I like that FiW is darker (but still is very cheerful), so I think that's why.

Unicorn "flying" and month-old babies with super-strength and unlimited magic capabilities are things I never want to see again. Being inconsistent with the world rules (like introducing cranes or coal-powered trains as has been done) is the fastest way to stop people investing themselves in the show.

Also the gross-out diaper related scenes. Did that have any value other than shock?

The parts of the episode without either of those were good, but I can't rate it highly because they were so few.

I wanted it to be that Pinkie had actually fallen asleep from exhaustion after putting them to bed and was simply having nightmares about not being able to deal with them, then waking up to find that she'd handled the responsibility fine.

Eh. I wanted Pinkie's "Pff! Screw you for correctly judging I was in over my head and coming to help!" to backfire on her, and for the lesson to be about accepting help when you need it. But apparently that was too Applebuck Season.

Even if the story about distant relatives being unicorns and pegasi is true, this episode implies that the genetics of pony type are very simple (2x2 punnet square simple). Perhaps the genetic code for wings and magic is incredibly complex but each can be *disabled* by a single allele. The question then comes up: how is it possible that the earth pony allele survived when the other two types are clearly more adapted for survival? Cultural practices* may have maintained the number of earth ponies during recorded history in Equestria, but how is it possible that they survived during the pre-civilization era? So many questions!

*Ponyville seems one of the few places with more than one type of pony. Appleloosa, Cloudsdale, etc.

EDIT: Nevermind, all my questions have been answered bronies.memebase.com/2012/01/18/my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-brony-biology-is-magic/

So... the Pinkie Pie as torture routine. That strikes me as surprisingly self-aware.

As a youtube commenter put it:

DAL0525 wrote:"I can't tell y'all﻿ the truth."

ELEMENT OF HONESTY HERE.

"Try to catch me now!" "Aw, nuts."

I laughed quite a bit at Rarity and Pinkie Pie at the end. The number of times the mane 6 will just forget about someone is mildly distressing (like Spike at Twilight's birthday, or leaving Rarity and Pinkie Pie to make it back to Ponyville by themselves).